Histories

Remarkable and full of grace. It broke my heart. - Sarah Perry

Economical, emotionally involving, insightful and rather beautiful . . . A luminous argument for truly seeing and listening to others and to ourselves; it is a serious tilt at working out what matters, honed in places where people are tested by such questions every day. - Guardian

"Many times man lives and dies / Between his two eternities:" says Yeats, but for the physician, the cycle becomes infinitely more complicated: for if, as Donne declares, "every man's death diminishes me" then, as Sam Guglani points out, with elegance, compassion, sadness and, occasionally, justifiable anger, the cost of taking, recording, interpreting and bearing witness to so many 'histories' - of life, of diminishment, of death - should compel, not only the medical profession, but also the world at large, to ask the most basic questions about the rift between the duty of care and the accepted norms of medical practice. - John Burnside

Guglani's compassion for the souls and bodies inhabiting his hospital makes this book much bigger than it appears. But Histories is not just heart - Guglani is the real deal. Some will describe him as a doctor-turned-writer. On the evidence of this remarkable debut, I would say he's a writer who also happens to be a doctor. - Michel Faber

Guglani's novel is profound. His writing is poetic, his observations about the current state of medicine searing. But most importantly, this book is humane - Gabriel Weston, surgeon and author of Direct Red

Histories is a gloriously written, spare and truthful work that is as generous as it is tough. For those of us with too much experience of being patients it offers great comfort - yes, our medical teams are exactly as human as we have long suspected. Guglani's book suggests they know this of us too. This is where connection begins. - Stella Duffy, author of London Lies Beneath

Histories offers a rare and poetic insight into the medical world from an unusual doctor/writer talent - Salley Vickers

Economical, emotionally involving, insightful and rather beautiful . . . A luminous argument for truly seeing and listening to others and to ourselves; it is a serious tilt at working out what matters, honed in places where people are tested by such questions every day. - Guardian